So I am about 1,100 Kanji into RTK studies using NihongoShark's deck and have come across a problem. I don't know if it is actually a problem, and if I am just worrying over nothing, but every since I started RTK, my deck has been capped out at 100 reviews per day. I haven't done any more than 100 reviews a day, nor any less (excluding the first few days where my deck was still building up). However, I am not sure if having the deck capped at 100 reviews was a format the deck came in, or something I inputted manually. After doing rounds on these forums, I see stories of people regretting the up-and-coming '600 review cards day' or similar stories about having mass amounts of cards to review. Should I actually be increasing the review amount to it's max, then reviewing every single card on a given day, regardless of how many that is? 

To make a little more sense of that if it looks confusing, I just increased the daily review counter to something crazy like 10000 so that Anki would show me the total amount of review cards for today, uncapped. The amount of cards to review for today increased to about 400. Do I review all 400, or do I revert back to doing 100 cards a day and gradually make my way through all of the reviews?  

I don't have a problem reviewing more than 100 cards a day, I just simply want to make sure it won't be detrimental for me to be learning 50 Kanji a day, but reviewing 'only' 100. Preference isn't an issue.

And good luck to anyone else learning the Kanji at the moment! I wish for the best in your endeavors! 

Optimal is IMO doing all reviews (without cap), to make sure cards are presented in correct time interval and not delayed. To lower amount of reviews, you can lower number of new cards instead, if necessary.

100 reviews per day cap is Anki default I think.

Personally, I run with a cap of 200 reviews. That way I don't have to see the huge backlog that reminds me I haven't been doing Anki regularly. Well, that isn't entirely a joke, it -is- discouraging to see a big backlog and you can feel better about yourself when you get your reviews down to zero every day. You -could- do that just by spending a ton of time in Anki, but I think it's important to spend at least half your study time, even as a beginner, doing things -other- than Anki. (As you get more advanced, especially when you start to understand native materials, Anki should take an even smaller percent of your time. It's a great tool, but don't let it become an obsession!)

Anyway, 100 is a slightly low cap, but it's fine. Anki's (or any SRS's) algorithm is not so precise that you'll magically forget stuff if you're off by a few days (except maybe for very new cards where the interval is only a day or two, then you might forget being a couple days later!) You could set it to show shortest-interval first to make sure that new material gets reviewed on time.

If you feel like you could and want to spend more time reviewing, then go ahead and raise the cap. You could also complete the RTK list with the cap at 100, and -then- raise it to work through the backlog - you'll have more time for reviewing once you aren't adding new characters. (Although you'll probably start a vocabulary deck soon after, but you can give that a separate cap or you can use a global cap that is big enough that you can review plenty of both decks.)

I should note, you'll work through the backlog eventually anyway as long as you are doing 100 RTK cards a day. RTK is a fixed size, and as the intervals become larger only a few cards will be due each day. The same is not necessarily true of a vocabulary or sentence deck - you can add to those indefinitely! You will want a slower new-card pace or a higher cap if you use similar settings for vocab, because otherwise the backlog can just keep growing forever.

Thanks for the input! I will likely increase the cap to around 200. It makes sense that the backlog would clear out over time. Once again, thank you for the input!

Just make sure to not skip reviews. If the daily reviews starts to trouble you, decrease them.
It's better to do fewer reviews every day than doing nothing for weeks and try to get back later.

After a long break( breakdown), I have over 1500 reviews to recover and it's overwhelming

I either turned off the review cap or set it to some insane high number. I forget which.
I figure if reviews start getting too high I'll just reduce or stop putting in new cards. My new card setting is set to 0 a day. When I do a section of RTK I use custom study to increase new cards by the amount I covered.
I've only skipped a day of reviews once in a while and am not in a situation where I can see my self skipping more than a day.

(2015-12-10, 4:32 am)r3ftch Wrote: Just make sure to not skip reviews. If the daily reviews starts to trouble you, decrease them.
It's better to do fewer reviews every day than doing nothing for weeks and try to get back later.

After a long break( breakdown), I have over 1500 reviews to recover and it's overwhelming

Well you better hop to it, 蛙!    (sorry, couldn't resist!)

Having 1500 cards backlogged is a good reason for a daily limit though. It helps you pace yourself, and conveniently hides the overwhelming number. It is better to keep up with your reviews, of course. If I could point to the single factor that has slowed my learning down the most, it's that I study Japanese in bursts. (It's less troublesome now that my reading and listening are getting to acceptable levels because even if I don't 'study', I still read and listen to Japanese stuff for fun.)

(2015-12-10, 10:02 pm)SomeCallMeChris Wrote: Well you better hop to it, 蛙!    (sorry, couldn't resist!)

Having 1500 cards backlogged is a good reason for a daily limit though. It helps you pace yourself, and conveniently hides the overwhelming number. It is better to keep up with your reviews, of course. If I could point to the single factor that has slowed my learning down the most, it's that I study Japanese in bursts. (It's less troublesome now that my reading and listening are getting to acceptable levels because even if I don't 'study', I still read and listen to Japanese stuff for fun.)

I study japanese since two years ago but i often took a break for months.

Now i have to review over 200 kanji a day in order to reduce total reviews(very slowly)